Vinohradský Pavilon. - Praha 2

We discovered this building one day when we were coming back home from a walk around the neighborhood. We were walking through Slezskà Street, it was already dark and suddenly we saw this building that surprised us. We stumbled into the back façade, it was late and it was already closed. We were walking around and trying to guess what this building was. The first impression was a market, like the typical markets you can find in the Mediterranean cities. In my city, Barcelona, you can find one of these markets in every neighborhood. Then we were looking through the windows and it looked as an art gallery. But we weren’t sure and, what´s more, we were super curious about this mystery place.

Last weekend we finally went to visit the building. It’s an old industrial refurbished building. Now it’s a shopping mall gallery specialized in furniture of design. There is also a cafeteria in the hall, an art gallery (Gallerie Pavilion.) and a supermarket in the basement.

I didn’t have enough of the Vinohradský Pavilon so I decided to search the internet for more information. But I didn’t find a lot or at least I didn’t find what I wanted to know. Who did the last restoration?

The Pavilon was originally a local factory producing mill machinery from 1879. The architect Antonín Turek converted the factory hall into a modern marketplace opened in 1903 with the name of Vinohrady Market Hall (Vinohradská tržnice). You can see a longer description here. 

Antonín Turek, the architect, was working around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Near the Old Vinohrady Market Hall he has two more buildings, the Vinohrady Vodarna (the water tower) and Národní dům (the Vinohrady National House) in Namesti Miru.

Around the 80’s the market was in really bad conditions and in 1986 it suffered a fire. After it, they were considering a demolition but the Old Prague Club (Klub Za starou Prahu) included the Vinohrady Market Hall into the State Register of Immovable Cultural Monuments. They stared a restoration to became a department store called Vinohradsky Pavilon.

Vinohradsky Pavilon was the first shopping mall after the Velvet Revolution opening in 1994. It offered many exclusive design brands but it didn’t work really well. The main attraction was the Albert supermarket. More information about the project here. 

The 11^th of October of 2013 the Vinohradsky Pavilion opened its door again with a long restoration of 9 months. It’s an investment of Martin Leitged, the owner of Stockist, an important Czech Republic distributor of house and furniture brands. Now it’s an exclusive shopping center of furniture where you can find the unique pieces designed by the most important designers and architects.

I found this information here, here, here, here, here (in Spanish) and here (in Spanish).

Vinohrady Market Hall designed by: Antonín Turek
Location: Vinohradská 1200/50 Praha 2
Opening hours: Mo - Fr 10-19.30, Sa 10-18
Public transport Station: Vinohradská tržnice